The First Affair (9 page)

“Sounds great.” Mom stood, ready to nap herself. “Um.” She leaned into me. “It’s not too pricey, is it? Because the tickets were a fortune.”

“My treat!” I said, instead of mentioning how frequently she shuttled to see Erica.

She smiled, pivoting between us. “My girls,” she said warmly, some memory playing behind her eyes. “I love it when we’re all together.” She kissed my forehead and then retreated to the bedroom. I watched her slip off her pants and fold them neatly over Gail’s vanity chair before closing the door.

“Do you want to nap too?” I asked Erica.

There was the inventory, followed by a tiny head shake before she looked at me with a hint of a smile, relaxing a bit as my parents drifted off. She pulled out her laptop. “I’m going to work. We’ll see you at eight—if Dad and I haven’t killed each other. If it’s just me and Mom at the table, that’s your cue to take the car from the valet and dump it in the Potomac.”

“Got it.”

• • •

Embarrassed that I was the only intern who took my dinner break to break for dinner, I nonetheless enjoyed Rachelle going toe-to-toe with Dad. “I’m sorry, I studied Irish literature in college and it was the most depressing thing I have
ever
read.” She touched my dad’s arm. “You do know what Greek gods are capable of, right? Turning people into trees, moving the seasons, spitting souls out of hell?” She explained to the rest of us, “Irish gods are all scrabbling over one potato. It’s like they never got the playbook. No one tapped them on the shoulder and said, ‘You can make more potatoes.’ It is the most pathetically depressing mythology you will ever read. I think in one story someone invents an umbrella and then it has a hole in it.”

Dad laughed until he had to dry his eyes with his napkin. Erica finished her dinner, then mine, then Mom’s.

• • •

“Rachelle’s a spitfire,” Dad said as we approached the steps to the Memorial, Mom and Erica a few paces behind us.

“I’m so glad you guys like her. It’s taken me a few weeks to find someone to hang out with.”

“Everyone’s—?” Dad tipped his nose up with his finger.

“Yup. And it’s not just the money stuff—they’re snobby in a way I never encountered at school. Lena could forget sometimes, like she’d ask why I didn’t replace my phone when I dropped it, or something, but she’s never snobby. Here it’s like someone fired a gun and they’re scrambling to find the connections they’ll need to get where they want to go and they decided on the first day I’m not it.”

“Fuck ’em.”

Smiling, I gazed up before we started to climb. “I don’t care if you wear Confederate underpants, I dare you not to find something moving about Lincoln lit up at night.”

“Agreed.”

It passed through my head that I should tell that to Greg if he ever did call me again—

“It’s disgustingly humid.” Erica interrupted my thoughts, tugging her pale blue blouse away from her chest. “Do we have to be climbing steps?”

“I know.” I sighed in commiseration. “I’ve given up trying to get my hair straight.” Of course, Erica’s had only flattened farther to her head. It was lank, sure, but at least it wasn’t conspiring to resemble cotton candy when she wasn’t looking.

“I thought night might be better,” she continued. “It’s not. People say New York’s humid, but it’s not
this
bad.” Or she’d already have had legions of coping strategies. “And Peter has good air-conditioning at the loft.” My parents’ ears visibly pricked up at the mention of her boyfriend. All we knew was that they’d met in the program, he came from money, and he worked in real estate development. “This is disgusting.”

“Bug, my feet are starting to blister.” Mom touched my arm apologetically and I saw she was wearing the slingbacks she bought for my cousin’s wedding that had never fit properly.

“Okay, let’s head back,” I conceded before we’d even made it under the columns.

Without protest, they immediately turned and started down. As Dad marched ahead, Mom slipped her arm through Erica’s and mine and I could smell her perfume—a department store scent she’d worn forever. “Maybe tomorrow we can off-load your dad at a movie and go shopping.” I couldn’t ever remember shopping with both of them as adults, having been scarred by the checkout counter screaming matches of Erica’s adolescence. Erica would ask for something we couldn’t afford—Dad would say he hated it to the point where he was insulting her. Mom would get stuck in the middle, wanting to mollify Erica, but still truly unable to afford whatever it was. By the time I became a teenager, Mom was so worn down, I probably could have come out of my room wrapped in a tatami mat and she wouldn’t have noticed.

“Oh, actually, I’ll be in Georgetown,” Erica said, continuing to flap her shirt away from her stomach, revealing bands of hard muscle.

I could feel Mom tense. “You will?”

Up ahead we saw Dad answer his phone.

“Oh, yeah, Stacey—you remember Stacey, from high school?”

She thought for a moment. “Not the girl with the lip ring?”

Erica blew out through her nose. “Oh my God, Ma, that was, like, a hundred years ago. She works for a lobbyist now. I told her I’d meet her for lunch.”

“Okay.” I could feel the Outlook calendar pop up in Mom’s field of vision like
Minority Report
as she shifted the day—and her expectations. “Well, we’ll hit the museums when they open and then meet up with you after lunch.”

“I’m going for a run in the morning.” Mom didn’t even bother to ask if Erica could skip it. “And then I’m going to a meeting. But I’ll catch up with you guys later—” She stopped short as all three of us saw Dad lob his phone into the gutter. Mom immediately ran over, scrambling to her knees to retrieve it.

“Dad!”

“Fucking assholes.”

“Dad, what happened?” I tried again.

He stormed away from us, then whipped back. “Fucking assholes!”

“We got that part,” Erica said flatly. The kind of line that would have gotten her a smack when we were kids.

“It was Cullen.” He turned to Mom as she pushed herself to her feet, cell phone in hand.

“Who’s Cullen?” I asked.

“Fucking asshole, that’s who.”

“Dad!” we said in chorus.

“He runs the citywide athletic program—decides which programs get funding.”

“He’s cutting your funding?” I was stunned. They still hoped to sell the house one day and retire someplace hot and cheap. They’d never make it if Dad lost his job.

“Not yet, but he can if he wants to—what did I do with the keys?” He patted his pockets. “They met tonight. They’ve decided to make a special presentation to Baker at the Thanksgiving game. Get all the boys—get
my
boys”—he thumped his chest—“on the field to present that piece of shit with some trophy.”

“Dad, I’m sure you can—”

“One hundred percent participation, that’s what Cullen kept saying,” he continued as Mom pulled the keys out of her purse. “One hundred percent.”

Erica swiped them from Mom’s hand and shut herself in the backseat. The three of us were left looking at each other.

“Well, we’ve got tomorrow night,” Mom comforted herself as she got in next to Erica. “That’ll be fun.”

• • •

When Bushy Eyebrows finally nodded that I could leave the office, it was already sometime after midnight. I quietly let myself in and immediately saw that Gail’s couch was empty. I put my keys down on the side table in front of Lena’s high school graduation portrait in its heavy sterling frame. The straps of her Vera Wang dress were strategically placed to hide the tattoo intended to rile Gail. What I wouldn’t have given to be coming home to her that night.

Getting some ice water, I went out onto the balcony where Erica
was leaning against the metal railing. “I didn’t know you still smoked,” I said as I slid the door shut.

“I don’t,” she answered without even turning around, a strong plume blowing over her head. “It’s better up here—there’s a breeze.”

I stared into the distance, the hovering moon and the languid heat making the city, which usually feels like the world’s largest open-air library, unexpectedly romantic. I wondered what Greg was doing at that exact moment and if it included picturing me sleeping peacefully.

“How’s work?” I asked.

“Oh God, don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Ask me like you’re Dad.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, not even sure what she meant.

“I’m in line for a good promotion this fall. No one seems to mind that I finished college at night school, Miss Summa Cum Laude, as long as I’m there twice the hours as everybody else.”

“He knows you work hard.”

“Does he? Because I think the expression he uses is ‘failing upward.’ ”

I studied her profile. “Is it fun? I mean, do you enjoy it?”

“I did fun.” She looked out, her slim freckle-free wrists resting on the bars, the wind ruffling her cotton slip, and I marveled at this incongruity that’s always been there between the delicacy of her features and the intensity of her energy. She’s like an orphan in a Japanime cartoon wielding a samurai sword. “Dad has to deal with his shit,” she said forcefully. “If he did the program, went to meetings, he could accept responsibility for his life, for his disease, instead of continuing to blame Baker for all his problems.”

“Well, he’s sober now,” I offered lamely.

“He’s a fluke. No, he’s worse than a fluke, he’s a fucking time bomb, and it’s not fair to Mom.” She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.

“How’s Peter?” I asked something Dad would never ask.

“He wants to have sex a lot.”

I raised my eyebrows.

She shrugged. “It’s common for guys in AA. They can’t use, so they eat too much—or exercise too much—or both. And sex becomes this calorie-free permissible thing. We’re working through it. I need to feel needed for me.” The last sentence was one of her pronouncements.

“I’m seeing someone.” I blurted out this exaggerated truth realizing I’d been dying to tell her—get her opinion, her advice.

“An intern?” she asked, flicking her butt off the balcony.

“No, actually, he’s, um, on salary. He’s super cute, in this kind of unexpected way. He smells like mulling spices, and he’s really funny—”

“Is it a sex thing?” I loved this side of Erica. The side that would come home smelling like Boone’s, get under my Barbie sheets, and give an unsolicited explanation of finger-banging. “A sleepaway-camp kind of thing?”

“You had sex at sleepaway camp?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“I never went.” By the time I was in fourth grade, her tutors and learning specialists and behavioral therapists were already eating through our parents’ income. I spent summers at the Y or riding my bike to the town pool with friends. “I don’t know—I guess so—he knows I’m just passing through and he’s—he’s permanent. Well”—I shrugged—“as permanent as anyone in the administration is.”

“That’s hot.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Nothing hotter than temporary.”

“Right.” I let that assessment sink in. “Right.”

“You want it to be more?” she asked.

“No, no—that’s not really . . . on the menu.” I chewed my lip, enticed by the smell of her freshly lit match as she fired up another cigarette. “Can I have one?”

“I’m low.” She blew out through her nostrils. “I’ve moved in with Peter.”

“Wow, okay,” I answered, because we’d somehow shifted back to her.

“What?” She tensed.

“No, nothing.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said in a way that meant it was.

“No, of course it isn’t,” I reassured her. “I mean, it
is
. But not like that.”

“Don’t tell them—I can’t deal with their shit right now. Jamie, you have to promise. Not until they’ve met him, and I don’t know when I’ll be ready to let that happen.”

“No, no, of course.” Even though I’d never had a relationship with them that entailed getting their shit—they didn’t yell at me. I didn’t snipe at them. Or disappoint. And I never sounded over them—she always sounded so completely over them, as though they were just this problem she had to manage until they died. Then I wondered if that was how she talked about me to her friends—so over me.

She returned her full focus to the view and I knew she was finished with the conversation—whatever she needed, she had gotten.

“Um, I guess I’m going to try to sleep.” I needlessly pointed to the glass door.

She didn’t answer, and as I sealed myself back in the recirculating air I shivered, wondering if she was right, if the hottest thing about me was that I was leaving.

• • •

I spent Saturday morning confirming that all the union leaders being flown in for the fireworks were getting face time with POTUS. And that their wives were being entertained by the First Lady. Who had planned, according to Abigail, to “get through the day” by showing them how to prepare Oreo banana pudding. Rutland had made an off-the-cuff remark on the campaign trail about loving it and it will dog the man till he’s dead.

I found Mom waiting for Dad at the museum café, flipping through
Real Simple
, and watched her for a moment before crossing the concourse. She was wearing her best clothes for this trip; I knew that. Her favorite twin set and her good linen pants. At graduation I’d noticed that she looked older than the other mothers. It had been hard for her, commuting back and forth every day, being the only link to stability and health insurance, needing to be sure she didn’t lose her job as Dad moved in and out of various junior
athletic programs, his confidence tattered after Baker fired him from his dream job. She couldn’t leave work for the school plays or doctor appointments, and he didn’t know how to navigate us through that stuff.

One Halloween we almost missed trick-or-treating because the strap broke on Erica’s tutu, then one of my cat ears ripped off and Dad had to sew our costumes back together, cursing the whole time and making us promise, on pain of death, not to tell her. Now it sounds kind of funny. It wasn’t.

“I gave up somewhere between air and space. Any word from Erica?” she asked as I set down my tray at her table.

I needlessly checked my phone, knowing I hadn’t felt it buzz. “Nope.”